This and That

Summer = fresh, in season fruit. I was very happy this summer when big containers of blueberries went on sale. The song "Which of these is not like the other?" popped into my head when I saw this. We enjoyed some beautiful summer sunsets The kids had 2 weeks of swimming lessons in between our trips and they all passed their levels, so I was thrilled with the new skills and progress they made! I can't remember where I had gone but when I came home, I discovered that Jared had taken Haley's training wheels off of her bike and she caught on right away! Yay Haley! Another very difficult puzzle completed without Jared's help for the most part. I can't remember how long it took me but it was quite a while! I'm almost done posting July pictures. This is turning into a long marathon! I see the finish line in sight....

The Drive Home

We woke up at 6 a.m. on Friday, July 15 to start the 2-day drive home. I can only imagine how expensive these houses by the water would be. We saw a lot of these chairs and I had a hard time getting a good picture of one, but I finally got one. It was so very scenic but somewhere through these mountains, Haley got a stomach ache. She complained a lot about stomach aches during our trip, which meant extra stops to go to the bathroom. This time, it resulted in her puking 6 times through the mountains. You can't just pull over in the mountains, as there if often no shoulder and you have to wait for a rest stop. That meant Haley just puked into a container (after the first time when we didn't catch it on time) and then we pulled over to empty the container when we could. At lunch time, she said she was hungry when we stopped at a Subway in Cranbrook, so we let her have a bit of food and a bunch of 7-Up. Unfortunately, it all ended up in the container during the afternoon. Thankfully, by suppertime in Lethbridge, she was better. We ate at McDonald's and let her have a yogurt tube and a fruit smoothie (I ate the burger from the happy meal) and she kept it all down! It was interesting to see the aftermath of a rock slide. When we were entering the prairies that evening, we got caught in a really bad downpour. Jared and a whole bunch of vehicles pulled over to try to wait it out. We were only about 20 minutes away from our hotel in Medicine Hat, Alberta, so after sitting on the side of the road for a bit, we were able to proceed with caution to our hotel. The rain lightened up by the time we got to our hotel and I had put all of our "night things" into one bag to carry into the hotel, so that made it a lot easier. We let the kids go swimming at our hotel, even though it was after 9 p.m. We had such a long day of driving and wanted to let them do something active before bed, plus they had been looking forward to it all day. We ended up meeting some people from Grunthal at the pool and one of them had just met with Jared's boss that week, so I had the song, "It's a small world," rolling through my head. We thought we had booked a room with a cot in it, but there were 2 separate buildings at the Super 8 we were staying at and we were in the "non-cot" building, so we managed to squeeze the kids into one bed.

We woke up around 6 a.m. again the next morning, as we had another full day of driving ahead of us.

The Manitoba sign was a welcome sight. Our 2nd day of driving with the kids was pretty awful...they were so done and so were we. We just wanted to get home, so we didn't stop for supper and just gave the kids snacks instead. I know, parents of the year award right there. We got home between 7 - 8 p.m., did a bit of unpacking and got to see a pretty sunset before crashing hard into our beds. It was a really fun (except for the last day of driving), spontaneous trip and I'm glad I let Jared convince me to go with only 3 days notice! I was also thankful that we had spare food containers along...and that our van has a DVD player...and that Jared thought ahead to rent 10 movies for 10 days for $10. Thus concludes road trip #1!

B.C. Day 7

On Thursday, July 14, we woke up to another beautiful day. We decided to try out a beach in Penticton, which was about a 15 minute drive from where we were staying. Right when we were leaving, Haley asked me to pull a leaf off a tree that we were parked next to. The leaves were massive!

We ended up going to Okanagan Beach for the day and packing a picnic lunch.

The water was quite cold, so the kids would come and warm up on the sand.

The wind picked up after being there for a few hours (you can see the water is very choppy), which was perfect for the guy who was kite sailing.

We decided to make the half hour drive to a place called Tickleberry's, where they have 72 flavors of ice cream and a really neat shop. We gasped at the prices (I think a large was over $10, so we ordered a large for the kids to share) but then gasped at the portions: they were absolutely humongous! The kids got a small bucket of ice cream that they split between themselves with 4 flavors. Jared and I shared a medium, which was 3 flavors and still huge. I tried some sort of lime one and a strawberry lemonade flavor and we ate outside and it was very enjoyable!

After our ice cream trip, we drove back to Penticton to Skaha Park where the kids played for a little while.

We then went for supper at Tug's Tap House Pub & Eatery which had caught Jared's eye when we had gone to see a movie in Penticton 2 days earlier. Needless to say, they did not have a kids menu but the kids shared chicken fingers which worked out well.

This house on the way back caught my eye. I like this church we drove by a few times in Summerland. That was our last day in B.C., as we got up at 6 a.m. the next morning and spent the whole day driving and then most of the day driving the day after that. I'm really glad we got to see family out there and check out some beautiful beaches! I will post some pictures of the scenic drive home. Until next time, "keep fit and have fun!" (Body Break)